A Fiction About Roman Emperors Interpreted as History
Suetonius; Tom Holland, translator, The Lives of the Caesars (New York: Penguin Books, April 29, 2025). Hardcover: $35. 432pp, 6X9”. ISBN: 979-0-143107-70-5.
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“A… new translation of Suetonius’ renowned biography of the twelve Caesars, bringing to life a portrait of the first Roman emperors in stunning detail.” The term “Caesar” in this context refers to Roman emperors. The emperors covered here start with Julius and stretch to Domitian. “The ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, where emperors had no choice but to fight, to thrill, to dazzle. To rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of the world. No biographies invite us into the lives of the Caesars more vividly or intimately than those by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, written from the center of Rome and power, in the early 2nd century AD. By placing each Caesar in the context of the generations that had gone before, and connecting personality with policy, Suetonius succeeded in painting Rome’s ultimate portraits of power. The shortfalls, foreign policy crises and sex scandals of the emperors are laid bare; we are shown their tastes, their foibles, their eccentricities; we sit at their tables and enter their bedrooms. The result is perhaps the most influential series of biographies ever written.” They were employed to convince much of the world in the idea that empirical conquest was glorious and heroic, as opposed to a barbaric massacre of “others” with the goal of enslaving them, and confiscating their lands. Such conquest was mostly achieved through such historic and biographic fictions, as opposed to by seriously fighting each tribe across regions being dominated. It is important to study this foundational text, but to do so with the realization that it is propaganda, as opposed to accepting it as a set of “historical facts”. “That Rome lives more vividly in people’s imagination than any other ancient empire owes an inordinate amount to Suetonius…”
The “Contents” explains that this book is logically divided into sections by the names of the emperors. There are helpful appendices summarizing the many different covered “Names and Dates” and the “Principal Characters”. The frontmatter also includes a useful family-tree of Augustus, and maps of the Roman regions. These are standard parts of Penguin classics, and the reason I prefer them over other editions of canonical texts. There are 30 pages of notes at the back of this book. These notes explain parts of the text, such as that a strange place-name refers to “what is now Switzerland” or that a given event took place on “17 November AD 9”.
The “Introduction” suggests (without meaning to) that this set of biographies might have been ghostwritten between 800-14 by a Frankish scholar called Einhard or by a still later forger who also forged Einhard’s” echoing biography of Charlemagne. This is because this Frankish scholar claims his far-from-Rome church has the sole surviving copy of this Caesars manuscript. If there had only been one copy of an authentic text; it would have only survived by being stored in a volt in a castle that is still standing from Roman times (even if revitalized). But the editor of this edition does not reach these conclusions, as this is contrary to the mainstream propaganda about Roman exceptionalism and the truthfulness of such “histories”.
How could any writer at the end of the period of hundreds of years of covered history have written anything but fiction when adding so much detail for biographies about which there were no primary sources that had made these descriptive claims earlier? Imagine if there were no history books in the library and you set out to write a history of the previous ten Popes. Suetonius is claimed to have written this work in 121AD, and describes a period between 49BC and 96AD, or equivalent to a modern author writing about a period dating back to 170 years ago (or 1855) with only living-memory dating back to under 90 years ago, and only rudimentary government and financial records as evidence. And if, as is more logical, the biographies were ghostwritten hundreds of years later: they must be echoing earlier falsehoods while imagining whatever suited current propagandistic needs, such as European expansionism and feudalism. The translator claims that “Suetonius’… sources” must have been “multiple and various” to write such extensive biographies. For example, he includes claims such as, “I quote them verbatim” (xxxi). Such quoting is a very recent scholarly device, so it is very unlikely an ancient author would have used such scholarly references. And the likely ghostwriter deliberately inserts the note that “3,000 bronze tablets” were destroyed in “AD 69” because of supposedly “fighting between supporters of Vitellius and Vespasian on the Capitol resulted in a devastating fire” (302). The lack of such evidence is the reason this work is likely to be fictitious. More recent Renaissance scholars might have cared about adding claims that evidence that could have proven them to be liars has been destroyed, as opposed to never having existed; but it is improbable that an ancient scholar would have understood such concerns. He simply would not have known about the existence of documents that were in the Capitol before his time of authorship. Suetonius writes: “these tablets—which covered alliances, treaties, and special privileges granted to individuals—were the oldest and most precious records of Rome’s empire in existence, featuring as they did decrees of the senate and resolutions of the people that dated back almost to the foundation of the city” (302). Why would he have such a detailed account of what was lost in the year when he was born: 69AD? The translator focuses on Suetonius’ grief over this loss, instead of the likelihood that this need to protest-too-much about missing confirming evidence indicates a fraud that is pulling on the readers’ emotions to distract from the missing facts. Other mentions of evidence in tablets in the body of Suetonius’ text include a note that “inside the tomb… in which Capys, the founder of Capua, was said to have been buried… they found a tablet of bronze, on which the following message, inscribed in Greek words and characters was written: ‘When the bones of Capys are disturbed, then shall one of his descendants be slain at the hands of a kinsman, and soon afterwards be avenged, at terrible cost to Italy.’ (The source for this, by the way, should anyone suppose it mere fantasy or fabrication, was Cornelius Balbus, a man who knew Caesar extremely well.)” (42). It is difficult to imagine a phrasing that is more self-accusatory. The note that disturbing the bones of a corpse will bring a curse is clearly intended to keep readers from researching the “fabrication” or fantastic untruthfulness of this direct quote from a non-existent or imagined source. The self-reflective parenthetical note that credits Cornelius Balbus is absurd because no books by this claimed author survive, and so this claim cannot be verified. Such references to non-surviving sources is typical across ancient “histories”.
Another tablet-mention appears in a passage where an emperor serving as a judge is said to have presided over a case where “all the signatories to a forged will were liable to be punished under the provisions of the Cornelian law, he distributed to the jury not just two tablets—one to register guilt, the other acquittal—but a third as well, for the pardon of those shown to have been induced to sign by fraudulent means or as a result of misunderstanding” (68). This suggests people back in Rome were capable of the intricate art of forgery and were managing to provide multiple forgeries with conflicting claims. A ghostwriter who was a forger would know about such details, but not an ancient author describing distant legal proceedings.
The translator does acknowledge that the brutal elements in these biographies are “an exercise in mythmaking” and “one of the supreme character assassinations in history.” For example, Tiberius is shown on Capri to be: “ordering a lobster to be rubbed into the face of a fisherman, employing young boys to slip between his thighs as he swims in his pool”. Since this is a character-assassination against “an aged tyrant”, the likely propagandist might have been anti-Roman-Catholic (xxxiii).
The rest of the intro tends towards puffery, only returning to the facts in a biography of Tranquillus. References to taking a trip to “the most barbarous outpost of the Roman Empire: Britain” by Hadrian in 122 suggests that a European author probably ghostwrote these biographies, as most of Europe was indeed entirely untouched by Romans, and certainly not the hard-to-reach British Isles, other than perhaps a few Roman forts that might have been instead built by later settlers (xvi).
This book is a necessary source for anybody who tends to cite Greco-Roman history, or is interesting in understanding this primary source. Researchers at all levels, students, teachers and libraries need to have access to it. Though we really should categorize this work into the fiction category. Many modern warlords (including in Israel, Palestine, Ukraine and Russian) are using Roman “historical conquests” as factual evidence to support their own expansionism. If these Roman “histories” are indeed fictions; then, they are fighting unwinnable wars inspired by fantasists.
Pennsylvania Literary Journal: Spring 2025 issue: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-spring-2025